Solo Of Cats and Turnips

[Dove Brown]

11 Fall 516
Dove gazed along the rows of swollen turnips stretching away from her into the mist, and then dropped her gaze to the basket and knife at her feet and sighed. Clearly, it was time to harvest them, which meant just as clearly that today was going to be one of those long and repetitive ones. Wonderful. And on a misty Fall day as well. She sighed again, scooped up the basket and stepped up to the first row. She wiped droplets of mist from her face, pulled her hat down over her ears, and considered the tasks she'd need to do, then knelt with a grimace. At least, she thought, her trousers were tough enough to take a beating in the dirt. Running her hand over the dirt, she found it faintly dewed on the surface, but dry below. Dust rose as the clods crumbled under her touch, and was as quickly dampened down by the moisture in the air. At least, she thought to herself, it hadn't yet turned to clinging mud. That would have been a pain to pull the turnips out of, whereas this soil would mostly just crumble off them.

She pulled the first turnip out of the soil, shook off the worst of the remaining dirt - there wasn't much of it - and pinned it with one hand so that it didn't roll away when she picked up the knife and sliced off the green leaves. Turnips kept so much better without their leaves that it was worth the effort to cut the leaves off as they were harvested. She dropped the turnip into the basket and left the greens lying on the dirt for now. The smallest and newest of the leaves could still be eaten, and the rest would later be ploughed into the field as fertiliser.

[Dove Brown]

A second turnip followed the first, then a third. She worked along the row as far as she could reach, then set the knife down in the basket, picked up the basket itself, and shuffled along the row to a new section. A trickle of sweat wound its way down from under the hat and dried almost at once, leaving nothing more than a faintly itchy trail of salt behind. Dove grimaced, and tried to ignore it. It was one of many trails, and scratching it while holding a sharp knife would not, she was sure, be the best of ideas. At least, not unless she wanted an accidental haircut.

She sighed and reached for the next turnip, falling into a rhythm of pull, dust, pin, chop, and basket. Pull, dust, pin, chop, and basket. Slowly, the basket filled with white and purple globes, each promising to add some solidity to a meal or a trough of animal feed. Each time she moved along a row, the basket was heavier to haul with her. Eventually she sighed, heaved up the almost full basket, and trudged across the field to the pile of sacks left with a cart and its ox. She set the basket at her feet, picked up the top sack, shook it open, and hooked one corner onto the end of the cart, then began to transfer the turnips one by one from the basket into the sack. Each one bounced the sack just a little, but each bounce sent the sack creeping a little closer to falling. She grabbed it before the fall became reality, and the sensation of somebody watching, about to pounce on her and punish her for any minor mishap was suddenly so strong that she looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see her father there. There was nothing but mist.

[Dove Brown]

She tumbled the last few turnips into the sack and swung the sack itself up to sit on the floor of the cart before it tore and she had to do it all again. She looked along the cart at the ox looming in the mist, then shrugged. Looking after the ox wasn't really her task, there was a boy for that, and like the ox, he loomed out of the mist. He was carrying a bucket that he shoved under the ox's nose. Seeing the boy watering the ox reminded Dove of her own dry throat, so she fished out her own waterskin and took a scant mouthful. Only a mouthful, because it had to last all day. The water tasted unpleasantly warm and leathery, as if the smell of the waterskin had leeched into the water itself.

A black and white cat leapt to the top of the wall around and sat there staring at Dove like a haughty merchant staring at an unhelpful servant. Dove stared back at it, her mouth caught between a wry smile and a stubborn line. "No," she told it, "I've nothing for you." Undaunted, the cat hopped down, and stalked across the headland to sit primly at Dove's feet, as if staring from close up would have more effect. Perhaps it had been the cat's gaze that she'd felt before. Dove turned away with a barely concealed shudder and started on a new row of turnips. A breeze drifted across the field, curdling the mist into lumps and streaks. The breeze snatched up a fragment of the old turnip greens that Dove had left lying for the ploughs, and bowled it across the ground. The cat stiffened, and then shot after the moving bit of leaf. Dove couldn't help but laugh at the sight, and her hands stilled on the turnip she held as the cat and the leaf darted hither and thither around her.

[Dove Brown]

The moment broke when the cat successfully captured the leaf. It hadn't been that long, but it pulled Dove out from under the dread that mist and memory had piled onto her. She shook herself and worked on down the row she was on. The cat gave a sly look, then batted at the leaf so that it could chase it again. It didn't work so well a second time as the breeze had died down, but it did remind Dove to forage as she went. Most of the greens were too old to eat, but from the few that were still young enough to be edible, she extracted maybe a tenth, tucking them inside her tunic. The rest she bundled into the basket beside the turnips themselves. When the time to eat rolled around, she emptied the basket into the sacks and took one edible leaf with her as she headed for the wall.

The grass was damp, so she found a jutting stone in the side of the wall and used it to boost herself up. She climbed out onto the top of the wall, shredded the green leaf into her bread and cheese, and bit in. The slight bitterness of the greens complemented the creamyness of the cheese, and she smiled, glad to have her imagined combination confirmed as a good one. She washed the meal down with water from her waterskin, and wondered if there was someway to flavour it without having any leafy debris left behind to rot in the skin. Perhaps if she left herbs in the water overnight, and then strained it before she poured it into the skin it would keep the flavour? She thought it would be worth a try anyway. It wasn't as if she would be any worse off if it failed. She sighed, and the cat leapt up beside her and butted her with its head in a demand to be stroked.

[Dove Brown]

Dove ate the last of her food with a brisk but quiet efficiency, wiped her hands on her breeches, and then ran one hand along the cat's back, answering its demands. It purred under her attention, and wound itself around her to come out on her other side. She troked it with her other hand, and it seemed to like that just as much. It wasn't nearly as happy when she took her hand away and climbed down from the wall to get back to work. Dove shook her head at it. "Maybe you have all the time in the world for fussing but I don't," she told the animal. Horses liked being spoken to, perhaps cats did as well. "Go find someone else if that's what you want."

The turnips had waited long enough as it was, perhaps too long, and if she didn't get them picked and packed into the sacks, then she wouldn't get paid. She shrugged as the mist laid a clammy coating on her shoulders, set the basket on the ground beside her, and fell back into the rhythm of pulling turnips and cutting the greens off. Her back began to complain about the stooping and heaving at awkward angles but there wasn't really anything she could do about that. At least, not if she also wanted to get the crop harvested in a decent time span. What couldn't be cured, had to be endured, and she'd always been good at endurance. She'd had to be from the time she was small, and what she hadn't been born with, she'd learned soon enough.

She focused instead on the steadily growing pile of turnips in the basket, and the shrinking number left in the field that she still had to gather. A glance over her shoulder told her that she was almost two-thirds of the way across the field, which meant the total harvest would be pretty decent, despite the mist. Whoever had planted it up had done a good job of it, and she only hoped that she could match it when she did her own sowing jobs in other fields. She took the third basketful over to the cart, stretched, and gathered up a partly filled sack, hung it up and continued to fill the rest of it from her basket. The sack filled before the basket was empty, so she lifted the sack up into the cart and twisted the mouth closed. Then she picked up an empty sack, hung it up, and finished the transfer. One thing at a time was the way to get through tasks like this. One basket of harvest. One row in a field. Care for your animals. Care for yourself. At the thought, she took a swig from her waterskin, tried not to grimace at the taste, then gathered up the now empty basket and headed for the next row.

[Samuel Longwell]

Grading Complete Please edit your grade request thread so that it's obvious that it's been graded. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions/problems with your grade. Name: Dove XP Award: Planning 2 Farming 4 Food Preservation 1 Endurance 2 Observation 3 Cooking 1 Animal Husbandry 1 Lore: Food Preservation: Cutting the leaves off turnips Cats do the funniest things Turnip leaves complement a cheese sandwich Water from a waterskin doesn't taste good Notes: You've made the task of harvesting turnips into something that was interesting to read, well done. I hope you enjoy your grades.